How important are date nights to sustaining a marriage?

[Anonymous]

It's hard to have date nights when we have young kids and are both working full-time, but we do spend a lot of time as a family. Is that enough for the long haul?

[Anonymous]

Depends if that’s what your wife likes. Mine always wants all of us to be together so it works.

[Anonymous]

No. Maybe for the first year or so after each kid is born, but your marriage won’t survive 6+ years without somewhat regular date night. You need to feed that connection or it will atrophy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. Maybe for the first year or so after each kid is born, but your marriage won’t survive 6+ years without somewhat regular date night. You need to feed that connection or it will atrophy.

I’ll add as a tip - the way we manage this is we have a deal with the next door neighbors who also have little kids. We alternate Friday night date nights, starting after all the kids are in bed. One member of the couple not going out that week comes over and “babysits” (ie does whatever because the kids are asleep). Free and easy.

[Anonymous]

We never did them when kids were young. Only older when they were in activities or a lunch date when they were in school.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends entirely on what your life is like and what you prefer. We've never had regular date nights. Now, even with a kid who is seven, we have a "date" a handful of times a year. On the other hand, we spend a couple hours together every night and it connects us and makes happy. Date nights wouldn't improve on that, FOR US, but for other people they do.

[Anonymous]

As a husband they are stupid and irritating.

[Anonymous]

It's important to have time to connect as a couple, but it doesn't need to be outside your house and it doesn't need to be an uninterrupted several hours.

Source: happily married for many years with some stretches of regular date nights and some stretches without.

[Anonymous]

As a now empty nester who did very regular date nights throughout our kids’ childhoods (3-4x/month), I think they made the transition so much easier, almost effortless. Bartering with another family is a great idea, per PP above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to have date nights when we have young kids and are both working full-time, but we do spend a lot of time as a family. Is that enough for the long haul?

You’re probably fine. My spouse and I were hardly ever able to have date nights, and we’ve been happily married for forty years. Spoiler alert: things get really great when the nest eventually empties. Then, every night can be a date night, if you know what I mean.

[Anonymous]

I love family time as much as any parent, but couple time is different. We have a lot of fun with our kids, but when they're around, the focus is always on them and their needs. We don't have regularly scheduled date nights, but we do try to carve out time for just us. When the kids are in school we take a day off work here and there to connect.

[Anonymous]

We always did a date night 2x a month which truthfully was just going to dinner and being home by 9 when the kids were asleep. We spent the whole day with them so not feeling bad about not being there every other Saturday night.

We also took off work 1x every 2 months to do an all day date home by 4 when the kids got home.

We had a regular baby sitter who would nicely explain... I'm free every Saturday night for you because you are home before I even shower to go out.

Once a week (usually Friday) we would feed the kids kid food like mac and cheese and chicken bites and sit and have a Martini and talk with them, then put them in front of a movie to fall asleep and we would have a really nice dinner with wine, etc. I like to cook.

[Anonymous]

I'd say very important. Hire a babysitter or swap babysitting duties with another family that has a similarly aged baby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We always did a date night 2x a month which truthfully was just going to dinner and being home by 9 when the kids were asleep. We spent the whole day with them so not feeling bad about not being there every other Saturday night.

We also took off work 1x every 2 months to do an all day date home by 4 when the kids got home.

We had a regular baby sitter who would nicely explain... I'm free every Saturday night for you because you are home before I even shower to go out.

Once a week (usually Friday) we would feed the kids kid food like mac and cheese and chicken bites and sit and have a Martini and talk with them, then put them in front of a movie to fall asleep and we would have a really nice dinner with wine, etc. I like to cook.

Sounds like there is an issue with alcohol in your house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a husband they are stupid and irritating.

Best post ever!